the notebook - Forced Entertainment

 THE NOTEBOOK
Based on the book by Ágota Kristóf
EDUCATION INFORMATION PACK
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CONTENTS
1. TEACHER’S NOTES AND YOUR GROUP’S VISIT TO THE THEATRE
2. ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
3. ABOUT THE COMPANY
4. TIM ETCHELLS
5. INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN ARTHUR, TIM ETCHELLS, RICHARD LOWDON
6. MORE RESOURCES ABOUT THE NOTEBOOK
7. CREDITS
8. FORCED ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE
The Notebook Information Pack 1 **
1. TEACHER’S NOTES AND YOUR GROUP’S VISIT TO THE THEATRE
This pack is designed to help prepare a college or university group for their visit to the theatre. We hope the information
provided will enhance students’ overall critical appreciation of the production.
The aims of this resource pack are:
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To provide some context to the work of Forced Entertainment, especially for those who may be encountering the
work for the first time;
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To provide some background as to how this work in particular is placed in the company’s repertoire;
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To introduce Forced Entertainment’s artistic director, Tim Etchells, and this project’s key collaborators;
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To provide signposts to further resources for those wishing to engage in deeper research.
You can support this through:
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Engaging students in a discussion or some preliminary research about the company, prior to their visit;
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Making students aware Forced Entertainment’s work is very different from ‘traditional theatre’; that it can be seen as
challenging and dark as well as funny and moving;
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Ensuring in their visit that students are briefed to turn their mobile phones off and that quite a high level of
concentration may be required throughout the show;
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Encouraging students to think about what they might ask in a post-show discussion.
If you would like further information on anything in this pack, or to ask any further questions, please contact Forced
Entertainment’s Marketing Manager Sam Stockdale (sam@forcedentertainment.com) and we will do our best to help.
Thanks for arranging a visit with your group. We're pleased and excited to welcome you. We hope you enjoy the
performance.
A large print version of this pack can be made available – please contact
sam@forcedentertainment.com
The Notebook information pack © 2014. This information pack is protected by copyright laws, and may not be
republished, distributed, displayed or otherwise exploited in any manner without express prior written permission of
Forced Entertainment.
The Notebook Information Pack 2 **
2. ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
The Notebook (1986) is a Forced Entertainment performance based on the award-winning novel by Hungarian writer
Ágota Kristóf (October 30, 1935 – July 27, 2011). Kristóf has a reputation as one of the most provocative exponents of
new-wave European fiction.
The Notebook tells the story of two bothers, twins, as they are evacuated from the ‘Big Town’ to ‘The Little Town’ during
World War II, to stay at their impoverished grandmother’s farm. Their story unfolds somewhere in a Central Europe still
riven with contradiction after the territorial divisions imposed at the end of World War I (it’s not made explicit, but
somewhere that could be the border of Germany and Hungary). The twins are never named in the book, and at first
appear to be strange and dysfunctional social outsiders, understanding the world by their own harsh moral code.
However, as everything around them crumbles into vice, cruelty and opportunism (the church, the state, the army) the
brothers are slowly revealed as struggling moralists, doing what they can to survive, trying to live by consistent
principles while becoming hardened and conditioned to the situation they find themselves in. The connection between
them is foregrounded by Kristóf’s extraordinary decision to have them speak in a narrational voice of first person plural
throughout.
It is this narrational language – which is stripped down to the bare bones, no embellishment or metaphor – that
provides the basis for a compelling performance. Directed by Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment performers Richard
Lowdon and Robin Arthur stand side by side to tell the twins story – a marathon narration of two people trapped in one
voice and one shared perspective. The Notebook is a very pared down performance from Forced Entertainment - there's
something extraordinary about the relationship between the two people on stage and about the narrative, which is really
compelling, but there's no getting away from the fact that the work is built on narration and on talking. Watching this
intimate piece demands some serious concentration and engagement. We firmly believe that young people can meet the
challenge and make a great connection to this work.
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The Notebook World and UK premieres
The Notebook world premiere was on 9 - 10 May 2014 at
PACT Zollverein, Essen, GERMANY
The Notebook UK premiere was on 24 - 26 June 2014 at
LIFT 2014 hosted by Battersea Arts Centre, London
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PROGRAMME NOTE by Tim Etchells
Words paint such vivid pictures, and somehow the simpler the better.
Writing The Notebook from the perspective of two children relocated to the countryside during World War Two, the
Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf knew very well the potential of a straightforward approach to language. Her twin
narrators – the unnamed boys who describe their troubled lives in the countryside as the war drags to its conclusion and
the new reality of Hungary as a Russian satellite state takes hold – have a style that’s poised between kids’ picture book
and hard-boiled detective fiction.
Unflinching in their gaze when it comes to the hardships of occupied Hungary the boys insist on telling things just as
they are. “True things,” they say at one point in the book, “not invented things”, whilst elsewhere they expound the
philosophy that appears to have framed Kristóf’s own approach to writing the novel: “Avoiding feelings… and sticking
to… the faithful description of facts”, namely, “what is, what we see, what we hear, what we do”.
Reading the book Forced Entertainment and I were immediately drawn to the text, because Kristóf’s interest in the
pictorial dimension of language chimes so well with our own concerns in a range of different performance projects
created over the years; from the imaginary performance described in Dirty Work, to the condensed micro-narratives of
Speak Bitterness and the short-form predictions of the future spelled out in Tomorrow’s Parties. We’ve long been drawn to
the way that stories and images summoned simply in words alone connect so well with audiences as imaginative
collaborators.
What’s clear in Kristóf’s extraordinary novel is that the device of bare bones narration is also perfect for creating a moral
ambiguity – driving a narrative in which events and actions, presented without apparent judgement from the
protagonists, are left to resonate in all of their problematic complexity. Questions about the rights and wrongs of what
The Notebook Information Pack 3 happen, the motivation or even the tone of the characters’ actions is often left in a kind of deliberate suspension. The
blank facts – simply presented, stripped of adjectives, without comment or judgment – become questions in fact,
enigmas of action that we as readers, spectators and witnesses have to make sense of. This too has a deep connection for
the work in performance that we have been pursuing at Forced Entertainment, because it echoes our interest in
performance itself as a troubling, and to some extent incommensurable act – at once a knot made by the arrangement of
words and actions over and through time, a negotiation with the audience, and at core perhaps, simply a problem thrown
into a room.
Kristóf’s book shares something with the first text we made into a work for theatre – Exquisite Pain – Sophie Calle’s
troubling collection and exchange of narratives about heartbreak and suffering. Although different in significant ways,
the two works are linked both by a simplicity of language and by a use of narrative statement as the basis for
philosophical and in some senses ethical questions. But what links them more, in our minds at least, is the perception
that they are each built on deeply performative ground. In Calle it is the act of telling and retelling, an exchange of her
personal story with stories of others, that creates this foundation in performance, whereas in Kristóf it is the vivid
problem of the twin narrators, a duo who refuse to present themselves as individuals, and whose account of events is
framed by a relentless and apparently indivisible ‘we’. Reading the book it is hard not to be struck at once by the violence
of this identity confusion or submission to the anonymity of a collective subjecthood, the comical and shocking force of
the twins’ insistence on, and individual disappearance in, the act of speaking as one. Staging the book we are confronted
by this same shock, not as a linguistic abstraction but rather in the form of the present, performative and material
weirdness of two people claiming one role, acting, and speaking together.
The Notebook is about brutality and about survival – a tale not so much about soldiers, armies and other active agents, as
it is about the population that endures the conflict under occupation – a story about a war presented from a peripheral
perspective: that of the old, the wounded, of the women and the children; a story of the war from the perspective of
those caught in its’ machinery.
Tim Etchells, 2014 | Artistic Director, Forced Entertainment
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3. ABOUT THE COMPANY
Forced Entertainment are a group of six artists. Based in Sheffield, the work they make is presented all over the world.
Forced Entertainment started working together in 1984 and in the many projects created since that time they’ve tried to
explore what theatre and performance can mean in contemporary life. In doing so the group have made lists, played
games, spoken gibberish, stayed silent, made a mess, dressed up, stripped down, confessed to it all, performed magic
tricks, told jokes, clowned around, played dead, got drunk, told stories and performed for six, twelve and even 24 hours at
a stretch.
The work made is always a kind of conversation or negotiation. The group are interested in making performances that
excite, frustrate, challenge, question and entertain; courting confusion as well as laughter.
It’s seriously playful work and even after 30 years of working together they are still trying to answer questions about
theatre and performance - about what those things might be and what kinds of dialogue they can open with
contemporary audiences.
As well as performance works, the group have made gallery installations, site-specific pieces, books, photographic
collaborations, videos and even a mischievous guided bus tour.
For more information about the company and how they work visit the ‘About us’ section of
www.forcedentertainment.com. You can also find information about all the projects from the last 30 years in the
‘Projects’ section.
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4. TIM ETCHELLS
Tim Etchells (1962) is an artist and a writer based in Sheffield, UK. His work ranges from performance to video,
photography, text projects, installation and fiction in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the worldrenowned performance group Forced Entertainment and as an independent visual artist and writer of fiction. He has
worked in collaboration with a range of visual artists, choreographers, and photographers including Meg Stuart, Boris
Charmatz, Asta Groting, Wendy Houstoun, Elmgreen & Dragset, Philipp Gehmacher, Hugo Glendinning, Vlatka Horvat and
many others.
For more information see www.timetchells.com.
The Notebook Information Pack 4 **
5. INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN ARTHUR, TIM ETCHELLS, RICHARD LOWDON
Sheffield 2014
Questions by Anna Krauss
AK: Why did you choose to make a performance based on The Notebook?
RL: All of us read The Notebook in the late 80s sometime and one of the first things that strikes you about the book is the
incredible simplicity and brutality of the language. It’s written from the perspective of the twin brothers who are
protagonists of the story and everything is focused on what they do and what they see. The really simple, stripped down,
attitude towards narrative is very engaging. It was one of those things that we were drawn to, without really figuring out
whether we’d do anything with it. Years later, when we were rehearsing another project, we started using voices
speaking in unison and that, in turn, brought us back to The Notebook. In the first rehearsals we started to read it, Robin
and I, reading it together in unison.
TE: The ‘we’ of the text in the book is tied to the twins refusal of a separate identity. It’s a pretty uncanny narration and
all the time you’re reading you’re aware of the impossibility of the ‘we’ they propose – this ‘two people as one’. But when
you put the same thing into performance the uncanniness shifts - it's material, it's concrete, it's not the abstraction of a
text on a page. I mean – it's not an idea anymore, not something proposed in language – it’s a fact, two people, two
voices. It's immediately theatrical and dynamic and it's performative in a very simple way. That was definitely one of the
attractions to the text.
AK: What is the story about?
RA: At a basic level it’s about two boys who get sent to stay with their grandmother during the Second World War,
because the city they live in is being bombed the whole time and their mother can't look after them or feed them. It's
about how they deal with their new situation in the countryside and the brutalization they undergo – at the hands of the
Grandmother but also at the hands of other people they encounter – the local priest, foreign soldiers, the local
policeman and so on. At the same time what is interesting about the twins is that they retain a kind of morality. They
speak a lot about things that are absolutely necessary – food, or boots to walk in the snow –and for them this idea of
people’s needs informs a sort of moral code. The way they act throws up a kind of mirror on normal social engagement –
it is disturbing and horrifying; but it's also refreshing that it's critical of the way people behave; their hypocrisy and
double standards.
TE: It's a story about a war - but it doesn't have really a big part for soldiers. It’s written by a woman, it's a book about
children and women and old people and the wounded. So it's a story about the life that continues while the fighting is
going on - it's about civilians and a collection of marginalized figures who suffer the consequences of the war without
being any kind of major players in it. It’s also about the way that the climate and situation of the war impresses itself on
people and does violence to them. For me that's really relevant to the situation that we find ourselves in now, in 2014,
even if we're not in the middle of a war. We are in a middle of many different kinds of violence, which are perpetrated
and which misshape all of us on a daily basis. I’m talking about the economic crisis and the manufactured tensions about
borders and immigration, about the culture of surveillance, about the various remote wars in which we are involved.
AK: And is there any difference between the process on this project and the process of making something like The Coming
Storm?
TE: Theatrically this new project is really simple and it contrasts to performances like The Last Adventures or The Coming
Storm where we’re working with many diffferent ideas, people, music and costume to weave something that’s
deliberately chaotic. In The Notebook we're working in a much more focussed way. It's just two people on the stage,
they're dressed identically, and the performance is a lot of spoken text. What all this does is tune you to smaller details details of how things are said or of their relation to each other or of the different ways that the work makes a relation to
the audience. It operates in a very narrow aperture and every decision you make is a small decision, there are no big
dramatic moves to make. But together all the small decisions really count for something; they really change things.
RL: It's unusual for us to work with a text, because we're often working from improvisation, generating texts and other
things collaboratively. Working from a fixed object as we are in The Notebook brings with it certain pleasures, but also
certain difficulties. The book has a shape which you have to deal with, it has a particular energy, a particular structure.
We have to find a way to deal with and negotiate those things.
AK: DO you present the whole text? Or did you make cuts?
TE: We did start with the whole book but that took around 4 hours for us to read aloud! So, yes, we made cuts. I'd say we
The Notebook Information Pack 5 are down to about half of the text, tho we really try to make a coherent line, and preserve the major architecture of the
novel. What we're trying to do is bring the kind of sensibility that we have from the other work to bear on this text.
AK: How is it performing in unison?
RL: It's interesting when you have to share a text to that extent. Not all of it is unison - sometimes you're passing smaller
pieces backwards and forwards so there’s a sense of completing each other’s sentences. The really curious thing about
the unison is that you have to take all of your breaths in exactly the same places. So you find yourself stood next to each
other listening for the other persons breathing. We're not really counting time, just listening for the intake of the other
person’s breath.
RA: We’re reading. There’s something quite simple and straight forward about that. We’re standing there; two blokes,
both the same sort of age, not too dissimilar in height, so we could be the twins; it's clearly what we're referring to, but it
stays short of actually pretending that we ‘are’ those boys. There is a kind of obvious connection and link but when you
do the math it doesn't really add up – that’s what’s happening a lot in the piece, a simplicity that becomes complicated, a
gesture to representation or inhabitation but something that stays subtle, understated.
**
6. MORE RESOURCES ABOUT THE NOTEBOOK
VIDEO
The Notebook: Inside Story
13 minutes
http://youtu.be/rfAfrU3N9As
The Notebook Production trailer
Length: 1:14
http://youtu.be/2I_bYg_Ych0
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7.CREDITS
Conceived and devised by the company Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and
Terry O’Connor
Performers Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon
Direction Tim Etchells
Design Richard Lowdon
Lighting Design Jim Harrison
Production Jim Harrison
Co-Producers
The Notebook is a Forced Entertainment production. Co-produced by PACT Zollverein (Essen); LIFT (London) and 14–18
NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts
Council England. A House on Fire co-commission with HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Teatro Maria
Matos (Lisbon), LIFT and Malta Festival Poznan with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.
Development work generously supported by Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts (LICA).
The Notebook is based on Le grand cahier by Ágota Kristóf, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1986. English translation (c) (1988) by
Alan Sheridan.
Forced Entertainment Artistic Team Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells (Artistic Director), Richard Lowdon (Designer), Claire
Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor.
Forced Entertainment Management Team Eileen Evans (Executive Director), Jim Harrison (Production Manager), Natalie
Simpson (Office Manager), Sam Stockdale (Marketing Manager).
The Notebook Information Pack 6 **
8. FORCED ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE www.forcedentertainment.com
Here you can find:
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An archive of all the company’s projects, illustrated with stunning photographs by Hugo Glendinning, video
interviews, programme notes, essays and other fragments.
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Full details of all touring activity, including links to online booking where available.
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Links to online resources including free downloadable packs and articles about the company.
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Chance to sign up to our free mailing list to keep you informed of all Forced Entertainment news.
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ONLINE SHOP
Peruse our virtual shelves to order books, DVDs and other resources including:
Performance DVDs and texts
High quality multi-camera performance documentation of most of Forced Entertainment’s shows from the past 30 years
and texts.
Forced Entertainment Complete Collection
The Forced Entertainment complete DVD collection brings together all 28 performance DVDs, saving you over £150! The
collection now includes Tomorrow’s Parties.
Making Performance
A 30-minute DVD exploring the company’s working process.
Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance & Forced Entertainment - Tim Etchells
An extraordinary exploration of what lies at the heart of contemporary theatre. Written by Tim Etchells, his unique and
provocative voice shifts from intimate anecdote to critical analysis and back again to investigate the processes of
devising performance, the role of writing in an interdisciplinary theatre, and the influence of the city on contemporary art
practice.
British Library Sound Archive
www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/drama
The Forced Entertainment Collection at the British Library Sound Archive contains never seen before rehearsal footage, a
complete collection of our performance DVDs and texts alongside other contemporary performance documentation.
Access is free of but you will need to make an appointment, please contact them on +44 (0)20 7412 7447 or email NSAdrama@bl.uk.
Our Notebook
As part of our website we have a ‘Notebook’ section. Discover fragments from behind the scenes of Forced Entertainment
both in the rehearsal room and on tour.
Find us Online at:
Twitter @ForcedEnts #thenotebook
www.facebook.com
The Notebook Information Pack 7